Paybits wants you to get paid in bitcoin, and it doesn't care what your employer thinks.
Getting Bitcoins isn't the easiest process. Unless you want to pay a premium on LocalBitcoins, you have to connect a bank account or send a (possibly international) money order, then wait several business days, during which time, the price of Bitcoin can change drastically.
Paybits is attempting ot make that process far easier, by cutting out the process of "buying" bitcoins entirely.
Paybits is a paycheck processing company that will allow its customers receive a set portion of their paychecks in Bitcoin while still getting the rest direct deposited in fiat as normal.
Employees just gives payroll Paybits' instructions, which has the company send a set dollar amount to them, like they would for any direct deposit or investment account. Paybits turns it into bitcoins and sends it to an address the employee controls.
For its trouble, Paybits takes a flat five dollar a month fee. In a statement released by the company, Founder Scott Nichols was quoted as saying:
“Bitcoin shouldn't require membership in the technocracy to acquire it. Bitcoin should be as easy to get as your paycheck.”
While there already is an industry building around bitcoin that includes people getting paid in bitcoin, but that doesn't help the majority of the world that still gets paid in fiat money. If Paybit's process is as easy as they make it sound, it could greatly lower the barrier to entry for some people.
Nichols continued in the statement:
Paybits is an automated service, so the customer doesn't have to think about the right time to buy bitcoin. Enabling individuals to be paid in bitcoin is another step in extending the bitcoin ecosystem into our economy
It is that barrier that many people see as the main obstacle preventing Bitcoin from reaching mass adoption. A commonly used analogy is that getting someone set up to use bitcoin is a lot like getting someone set up to use the internet in 1992: You have to teach them the definition to a lot of words, they will certainly get confused at some point and you may get frustrated. At least this time around you don't have to tell them to disconnect their phoneline.
Paybits isn't designed for the complete Bitcoin newbie, but it should make it easier for the computer literate to access, store and spend the digital currency.
Paybits is launching in beta this month, you can request an invite on its official site. The public version is planned to launch in October, 2014. This should alleviate some of the difficulty people feel when it comes to getting into bitcoin investing, albeit with a five dollar fee.
We will have more from Paybits as it moves into its public phase.
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